


First Annual Islamabad Station Thanksgiving Dinner

by Andabella30



Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M, Romance, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:13:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27745783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andabella30/pseuds/Andabella30
Summary: This is set after the events of Season 4 of Homeland, but none of the bad stuff happened. Don't ask me how, but it didn't. Everyone (except Sandy) is still alive, and Ambassador Martha Boyd has moved on. Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers!
Relationships: Carrie Mathison/Peter Quinn, Max Piotrowski/Fara Sherazi
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19





	First Annual Islamabad Station Thanksgiving Dinner

After a staff meeting a week and a half before Thanksgiving, a young officer named Malcolm James pulled Carrie aside. 

“What happens on Thanksgiving?”

“What?” she said. “What do you mean?’

“Like, how do we celebrate Thanksgiving?”

“We don’t.”

“At all?”

“That’s what ‘don’t’ means.”

Malcolm looked crestfallen, and while Carrie didn’t exactly feel sorry for him, she was in a good mood (for her) and feeling generous.

“Well, sometimes some of the embassy staff host dinners and invite us, at least at some of the other posts I’ve worked,” she said. But both she and Malcolm knew that was unlikely to happen this year—the new ambassador was not fond of Carrie, and vice-versa, and the State and CIA sides of the house mirrored the positions of their management. “You’ve still got time to make friends over there,” Carrie added, trying to offer a little hope. 

“Uh, yeah, okay, thanks,” said Malcolm, and left, trailing dejected homesickness in his wake. 

Carrie shook her head. How anyone thought this sad-sack sentimentalist would be able to recruit and run assets was beyond her. 

But two days later, Malcolm announced at another most-of-the-staff meeting that he was organizing a Thanksgiving dinner; that he had procured and would prepare four large, Cajun-seasoned turkey breasts, several enormous cans of collard greens, a ham, and a bag of potatoes; that he would host the meal in their central workspace, if it was okay with Carrie; and, that anyone who wanted to attend should bring a side dish and a beverage, hard or soft. 

As she listened to him, Carrie made minor tweaks to her assessment of Malcolm James; he was, at a minimum, resourceful and organized. And he had recruited at least one asset in his six weeks in country—it was a little early to know how useful the asset would be, but the asset was well placed, and had potential. Perhaps the young Mr. James would work out, after all. 

A week or so later, a little after eight in the evening, when Carrie had just gotten out of the shower and poured herself a brimming glass of white wine, someone knocked at her door. Carrie gulped down several swallows of wine so the glass didn’t look so full, and curled her lip. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone.

Especially Max.

“Hey, Carrie,” he said.

“Hey, Max,” Carrie answered. She didn’t smile or gesture for him to come in. 

“Mind if I come in?” 

Carrie didn’t speak, but she opened the door wider and stepped back to make way for him. 

“I need to talk,” he said, dropping into the uncomfortable arm chair facing the equally uncomfortable sofa. 

“Okay,” Carrie said, heading toward the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink? I’ve got pretty much everything.”

“Beer would be great.” 

Carrie grimaced, but checked the refrigerator just in case. “Yeah, no, sorry, I don’t have beer.”

“Bourbon?”

“Ummmm…” Carrie muttered, banging bottles around as she looked through her cabinet, “Again, no.” 

“I guess ‘pretty much everything’ means something different to you than it does to other people,” Max said. 

Carrie straightened up and shot him a look. “I have a lot of bottles down there, but it turns out they’re all vodka, tequila, or wine. I just assumed there was more variety. Not that you deserve an explanation, seeing as how you just invited yourself in. What do you want Max?”

“Well, first I need some bourbon. I’m gonna check with Quinn.” Max jumped up and was out the door before Carrie could say a word. She downed her wine and poured another glass. She’d had plans to get a little drunk before Max showed up, and she wasn’t going to let his nonsense, whatever it was, get in the way.

And in less than two minutes, Max was sailing back through her door again—no knocking, this time—with a bottle of bourbon and Quinn.

 _Shit_ , Carrie thought, _Quinn_. She gulped more wine.

For the last four or five months, Carrie had been...aware...of Quinn in ways that unsettled her. 

Right around the time Sandy was killed, Quinn had started to make her nervous. She just woke up one day, and stepped into the operations rooms, and saw Quinn, wearing his normal Quinn clothes and rubbing his hand across his normal Quinn face, and thought, _I wish he would take those clothes off and rub his hands all over me._

Her eyes widened, and her stomach lurched the way stomachs do when they decide they want to have sex with someone, and she thought _What the fuck?_ She wondered if she was coming down with something. 

“Good morning,” she’d said. 

Quinn looked up. “Good morning, Carrie.” He gave her a smile, or what passed for a smile with Quinn.

During a debrief of an officer later that day, Quinn’s pulled his chair near Carrie’s, and she found herself tracking every subtle shift of his position in her peripheral vision. She could barely concentrate on the debrief, and when the officer was done, she followed him out of her own office, leaving a puzzled Quinn behind. 

Carrie had managed to regain her surface equilibrium after that first day or two, but she’d put up a wall. Quinn had asked her out for drinks once a few weeks later, and though she’d accepted, she’d dragged Max and John Redmond along, and begged off after the first vodka tonic, claiming a headache. Quinn’s face had fallen, very subtly, when she appeared with Max and Redmond in tow, and she could have sworn she saw him roll his eyes when she brought up her ‘headache’. She’d wondered briefly what that was about. She used to think, back when Brody was alive, that Quinn might have had the hots for her, but she was pretty sure that it was just physical, and besides, she hadn’t seen any indication of it since she’d arrived in Islamabad. In fact, she’d heard rumors that Quinn was spending time with a blonde BND officer out of the German embassy. 

So, for the last few months, she’d been determinedly going out of her way to avoid spending time alone with Quinn, and to maintain an attitude anywhere on the neutral-to-testy end of the spectrum. 

But now, Max had dragged Quinn into her quarters, she was starting on her second glass of wine, and she couldn’t help but notice his butt. He was wearing some kind of jersey-ish sweat/pyjama pant garment, and the butt area looked...good. A bad ass really showed itself in whatever kind of pants it was he was wearing, but his was nice. Very nice, in fact. Maybe not championship material like his hands—Carrie had really developed a thing about Quinn’s hands in the past couple months—but it was definitely making her think thoughts.

“Hey, Quinn,” she said, smiling crookedly and holding up her wine glass.

“Hey,” he said, and smiled a real smile. Brief, but real.

Both of them turned to Max. “So?” they said at the same time, then started to laugh. 

Max found a glass and ice and poured some of Quinn’s bourbon over it, then sat down on the arm chair. Carrie and Quinn had no choice but to sit down together on the small sofa.

“You can’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you.”

Again, Carrie and Quinn had twin reactions: raised eyebrows that said _Are you fucking kidding me?_ It seemed to satisfy Max.

“So, I’m in love with Fara, and I want to propose to her during Malcolm’s Thanksgiving dinner.”

Carrie’s wine and Quinn’s bourbon sprayed all over their knees and Carrie’s tiny coffee table.

“Does she know?” asked Quinn, heading to the kitchenette to get paper towels.

“That I’m going to propose? No. Of course not.”

“Does she know you’re in love with her?” Quinn was being very patient.

“I don’t know,” Max said.

“Well, is she in love with you?” Carrie asked, hoping that this wasn’t heading in the direction it appeared to be heading.

“I don’t know,” Max said, “but we spend a lot of time together.”

“You work together,” Carrie said. “She has to spend time with you.”

Quinn, who’d returned to his seat on the sofa and was wiping down the coffee table with soapy paper towels, turned his whole upper body to give Carrie a look. She looked back at him and shrugged. 

Max took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Well, Carrie, thanks for the encouragement, but we spend non-work time together, too.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said, “I saw you guys last month at The Khyber Pass.”

“She took me there for my birthday.” Max said, looking pleased.

“That place isn’t cheap,” Quinn said, handing Carrie the dry paper towels, presumably to follow his wet ones. “She at least actually likes you as a person. I wouldn’t spend that kind of money on a pity dinner.”

Carrie wanted to ask Quinn what he was doing at this expensive Khyber Pass restaurant that no one had ever taken her to, but she held her tongue.

Carrie finished drying off the coffee table, then gathered all the paper towels, wet and dry, and headed back to the kitchenette to put them in the trash. She grabbed her wine bottle on the way back.

“But you’re not actually dating?” Carrie said. 

“No, not exactly.”

“Well, why don’t you try that, first?” Quinn said. “An actual date.”

“How’s that different from what we’ve been doing?”

“Which is what?” asked Carrie.

“Sometimes we watch movies on the weekend. We’ll occasionally have a text exchange, or a phone call in the evening. We get lunch when we’re working together, and dinner sometimes after work.” 

“That sounds promising,” Quinn said. “So you could maybe start by changing how you phrase things. For instance, you could look at her—like this—” Quinn turned toward Carrie, and looked at her with warm eyes and a small, Quinn-like smile, “and say ‘Fara, I’d like to take you to dinner on Saturday.’ It has a different feel than—” Quinn slouched back on the sofa and looked at his watch—“I’m starving—wanna grab some food?”

Role-play complete, Quinn turned to Carrie again. “Right? Didn’t that feel different to you?” 

“Sure,” Carrie said, and hoped she wasn’t blushing, because when he fake-asked her to dinner on Saturday, his voice took on a sultry tone that made her stomach fluttery and her head light. “It was certainly sexier than ‘wanna grab some food?” 

“But that’s the problem,” Max said. “I don’t want to be too sexy.”

Again, Carrie and Quinn had the same reaction, but they both, to their credit, suppressed it.

“She’s a nice Muslim woman, and it’s...different. It’s not that I don’t think she’s sexy—or sexual—or whatever, but she’s never going to be comfortable putting that out there casually. I can’t just get drunk and throw myself at her.” 

“That’s too bad,” Carrie muttered, “because that’s what usually works with me.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Carrie could see Quinn freeze for just a millisecond as he raised his bourbon to his lips, but he recovered quickly.

“So, that’s how I got to a proposal,” Max continued. “My feelings for her are serious, and if I lead off with a proposal of marriage, she’ll know that.”

“But why a public proposal, in front of the whole team?” Quinn asked. “What if she turns you down? I just can’t imagine doing that. I’d have to have _some_ idea that she was interested. Actually, I’d have to have _a lot_ of idea she was interested.” 

Max looked at Quinn for a moment. “Normally, I’d feel the same way, though I think you may be more sensitive in that regard than I am. I’ve had my successes, but I’ve been turned down a lot, Peter. You, maybe not so much. Anyway, I’ve got a thick skin, and I know that even if this were to go badly, I’d recover. My contract is up at the end of the year, so I don’t have to renew if I don’t want to, and I wouldn’t have to see any of you again. I’d move on and meet someone else. Eventually. But to answer your question, the public part of the proposal would be to reinforce the legitimacy of it. The main thing, though, is that I’m pretty confident she won’t make me embarrass myself. I can’t explain it, but I’m just...confident. I think she has similar feelings for me.” 

And then, Max smiled, a big smile, and his eyes brightened and his face relaxed. It was as though all the hesitation and confusion, all that had been worrying him, had evaporated. Just like that. 

“For what it’s worth, Max, I do think she might be into you,” Quinn said. “She’s brought your name up at least twice to me for no real reason, and once I noticed that she was looking at you in a particular way.”

“What is ‘a particular way?’ ” Max asked.

“It’s that dreamy, admiring look, I guess,” Quinn said, hesitating a little over how to characterize it.

“Oh, that particular way,” said Max, looking directly at Quinn. “Yeah, I’ve seen people with that look.”

Carrie was watching Max as he spoke, but his look at Quinn was so pointed that she could not help but turn in his direction. He appeared to be blushing, but that couldn’t be right, unless maybe it was the bourbon. 

Max, who seemed to have settled his own issues to his satisfaction, suddenly seemed bent on pressing Quinn.

“What about you? How would you declare yourself? 

“What?” Quinn said.

“How would you tell a woman you had feelings for her?”

“That’s a weird question,” Quinn said.

“No it’s not.” This time, it was Carrie and Max speaking in unison. 

“I don’t know how I would do something like that. I’ve never done it before.”

“Really?” Max said, incredulous. “Have you never _had_ feelings for a woman, or have you just never expressed them to her?” It was Max’s question, but Carrie was looking at Quinn intently, waiting for him to answer.

“I don’t think this is any of your business, Max.” 

“No, but we’re all friends here, and we’re putting our hearts on the line tonight.”

“Max, _you_ are putting _your_ heart on the line. Don’t drag me or Carrie into this. I can’t speak for her, but I was minding my own business until you came begging for bourbon and a sounding board for something you were already set on doing.” Quinn stood up from his seat. “And in fact, I’m done for tonight. I gotta get up early. I’ve got a 7 am surveillance shift, plus I have to figure out what I’m making for my side dish on Thursday.”

Carrie, a little too casually, said, “Hey, uh, I’m going to the market tomorrow afternoon to pick up something for my dish. Wanna come?”

Quinn turned to look at her before he pulled the door behind him. “Yes, Carrie, that would be good.”

“About two-thirty,” she said.

“Perfect,” said Quinn, and closed the door. 

Max smiled at Carrie beatifically and drank back the bourbon remaining in his glass. 

“This is going to be an awesome Thanksgiving,” he said, and kissed a surprised Carrie on the top of her head.

“Jeez, Max, what are you doing?” Carrie pulled away and made a face like she was in the second grade, and Max had cooties. 

“Oh, Carrie, I’m just happy...for everybody. Thanks for listening.”

And then Max was gone, and Carrie no longer wanted to be drunk, so she drank a big glass of water and found a movie to watch on her laptop. She was asleep by ten pm, but not before she went over the evening’s conversation at least five times in her head. 

  
  


Quinn and Carrie met up at two-thirty as planned. Quinn had decided on a simple salad with bread that would be quick and easy to prepare. Carrie, on the other hand, despite her dislike of and inexperience with cooking, had selected a complicated lentil stew.

“Are you sure, Carrie?” Quinn said for the third time as she threw several more ingredients into her shopping bag.

“Yes, Quinn, I’m sure. I’ve been craving a good dahl, and I’d like to learn how to make it for myself.”

“Okay, then. What else do you need?” And off Quinn went, looking for the last three items on Carrie’s ambitious list.

Back at the embassy, when they got off the elevator on their floor, Quinn had several of Carrie’s bags in hand. He followed her into her apartment, and set them gently on the floor in her kitchen. He stood there for a moment, looking down at her, and Carrie felt a sudden warmth flood her body. 

Quinn’s stillness wasn’t awkward, but it was noticeable, and Carrie wasn’t sure what to do about it. Normally, she’d know exactly how to handle something like this: she’d look up and into his eyes, and then look at his mouth, and, well...that always worked. Always. If you looked at a man’s mouth, and he knew you were looking at his mouth, and he was in a position to do something about it without causing a scene, he did something about it. But what if Quinn was the one man who wouldn’t respond that way? What if he pretended he didn’t notice, or, worse, made it clear he’d noticed and just wasn’t interested? The potential shame made her knees weak, and not in a good way. The idea of Quinn telling her he wasn’t interested seemed particularly terrible, and it was freaking her out.

So, Carrie did not bat her eyelashes (figuratively or literally) and turn her face up to be kissed. Instead, she turned her back to Quinn and started organizing the overwhelming mountain of ingredients on the small counter top, and gave him a friendly, airy _‘Thanks for your help today, looking forward to Thanksgiving, see you tomorrow, yada yada.’_

She didn’t look at Quinn at all as he left, and so she didn’t see the deflated, confused look on his face. She also didn’t see the sudden resolute set of his shoulders as he reached the door, and she didn’t see him turn on his heel and cross the room back to the kitchen area in just a few steps, and so she jumped when he said, from an unexpectedly close distance, “I’ll be back in the morning, Carrie. You’re going to need help.” And this time she did look at him, and she nodded, gratefully, because very, very, very rarely, Carrie liked for certain people, under certain circumstances, to be bossier than she was. 

Quinn knocked on Carrie’s door at 10 am sharp. He was carrying the chef’s knife and cutting board and a few bowls from his own quarters, and in just a few minutes, they established a working rhythm. Carrie read out instructions from the recipe, and Quinn directed the response, sometimes measuring ingredients, sometimes chopping vegetables, and sometimes relaxing and chatting for a few minutes while they waited for something to soften or simmer or boil. Carrie found herself distracted, as usual, by Quinn’s hands, and several times she asked him to repeat what he’d said. She was mortified, but she couldn’t help herself. 

On the less mortifying side, she’d noticed at least twice, when she’d worked up the nerve to look directly at him, that he was watching her intently, and he’d asked _her_ to repeat herself on more than one occasion. They brushed shoulders and hips as they moved around the tiny kitchen, and wordlessly endured tiny bursts of static electricity as their fingers touched when they transferred tools and ingredients. Carrie felt as though she were moving in some kind of warm, liquidy, altered state; she felt like she’d been drugged, but in the best way. 

When the dahl was set for its final simmer, they cleaned up the kitchen, and Carrie poured them each a glass of wine. Carrie took a small sip as they settled down in the living area, Carrie on the sofa, and Quinn on the chair. 

“So, do you think Max is really going to propose to Fara?” Carrie said.

“Jesus, I hope not,” Quinn said. “No matter what she says, it will be awkward. The whole idea is just unfathomable to me.”

“Proposing, or proposing in public?”

“Proposing, in public, to a woman I’m not even officially dating. Any one of those is terrifying, but all three together... ” 

“Yeah,” Carrie said. “That’s a bold choice. And not what I would have expected from Max when I first met him, but I’m finally starting to appreciate his layers. He’s got heart.”

Quinn smiled. “That’s exactly it, Carrie. Max has heart. And passion. And I hope Fara does love him, because if she does she’ll be a lucky woman. But it has to be mutual. God, I hope it’s mutual.” He drank from his wine glass.

“I really hope it's mutual, too” Carrie said, but there was, simultaneously, a softness and an intensity to her voice that made Quinn stop mid-swallow and really look at her. She set her wine glass down--she had only taken a few small sips--and gave Quinn a look that was unmistakable to almost anyone except a man who cannot believe that he is, at last, getting said look.

So Carrie repeated herself, slowly. “Quinn, I hope that whatever it is that’s going on is mutual, because it would be a waste not to fall for a man with that kind of passion.” 

Quinn paused for a long time. He set his wine glass on the coffee table.

“Carrie, are we still talking about—”

“Quinn,” Carrie said softly, as she looked from his eyes to his mouth, “if you ask me if I’m still talking about Max, I swear I’ll—”

Quinn never did find out the exact nature of Carrie’s threat, and they didn’t make it to Malcolm James’ First Annual Islamabad Station Thanksgiving Dinner until desert. But their timing was perfect, because Fara and Max showed up at just about the same time and announced that they were engaged.

“I was pretty sure she’d say yes,” said Max to Quinn as they were pouring champagne into little paper cups. No one could hear them for all the cross-talk and laughter and cheers. “And I figured if that was the case, I wanted to be alone with her for a while. So I proposed this morning.”

Quinn hugged Max tightly. “Good man,” he said, “I’m really happy for the both of you.”

Max smiled. “And did it work with Carrie?” he asked, very quietly. “I mean, I’m guessing yes, given that you showed up when we did.”

Quinn smiled, just a little, and looked at Max with eyes that were...happy. It occurred to Max that he'd never seen that expression on Quinn's face.

“You were right, my friend. She’s almost as crazy about me as I am about her. Almost.” 


End file.
